Mixed Messages

With the repeal of statewide cell phone bans, districts are being
asked to make their own policy decisions.

Like most of her friends at Renaissance High School in Detroit,
16-year-old Whitney Tillery carries a cell phone in her purse. The
junior admits this sheepishly—she knows Detroit Public Schools
policy forbids students from carrying or using mobile phones, pagers,
and other portable electronic devices. But she also knows the reception
her phone gets—so to speak—varies from classroom to
classroom. "Some teachers confiscate them if they see them," she says.
"Other times, teachers will just tell students to put them away." That
disparity is a microcosm of the growing national ambivalence toward
cell phones at school.

As pagers and then cell phones became commonplace during the past
two decades, many school districts at first took a hard line. Afraid
the gadgets might be used in drug deals and gang activity, and wary of
the beeping, trilling distraction they created, several states banned
them outright from school grounds. Then came Columbine and September
11, and the cell phone calls students were able to make from
locked-down schools to reassure frantic parents and summon help. Many
parents also now rely on calls from their highly scheduled children to
know when they need to be picked up from honor society meetings,
orchestra rehearsals, or soccer practices. In response, the state
legislature in Michigan, like those in Arkansas, California, Indiana,
Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, recently
lifted its statewide ban on the devices. Now school administrators are
forced to decide how to balance parent and student demands for safety
and convenience with the need to keep classrooms from sounding like a
phone bank during a pledge drive.

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but anecdotal evidence
suggests that many school districts are implementing policies that fall
somewhere between banning cell phones entirely and enshrining them as
an absolute right. After all, it’s pretty hard to outlaw an
object that’s become nearly as ubiquitous as the wristwatch.
According to the Yankee Group, a Boston-based communications research
firm, an estimated one-third of U.S. children ages 10 to 19 already
have cell phones—a figure expected to grow to two-thirds by 2005.
"You get to a point where you can’t fight them anymore," says
Stephen Degenaar, principal of Apple Valley High School in Minnesota.
This past year, the 2,300-student school updated its policy to say
it’s OK for students to carry cell phones as long as the devices
remain out of sight during the school day. "There’s cell phone
etiquette," Degenaar explains. "You don’t want cell phones going
off when you’re in a theater watching a movie, and it’s the
same thing during a school day."

Although Michigan’s cell phone moratorium is now history,
Whitney still finds herself on the wrong side of school policy. Detroit
is maintaining its ban on cell phones—at least for now. "We
don’t want anything to interfere with the instructional process,"
says Roland Moore, the district’s chief information and
technology officer. But, he adds, officials will review the policy this
year "to make sure [it] has widespread support." It may
not—Renaissance’s 132 student council members previously
voted unanimously to recommend allowing students to carry phones if
they are turned off. In Washington state, one state senator tried to
take cell phone acceptance even further by introducing a bill that
would ban school cell phone bans. The measure, which passed the Senate
unanimously but died in the House of Representatives, would have
effectively guaranteed students’ right to carry phones at school,
though schools could still have regulated their use. The bill’s
sponsor, Senator Rosemary McAuliffe, has said she will reintroduce
it.

With the repeal of
statewide cell phone bans, districts are being asked to make
their own policy decisions.
—Photograph by David Kidd

Not everyone buys the argument that school safety improves when
students have cell phones. This past year in Chalmette, Louisiana, the
school board considered replacing an outright ban with a policy
allowing students to carry but not use cell phones during school hours.
But after gathering negative feedback from principals, the board
decided to let its original embargo stand. "We have adults always
available who have cell phones, so we didn’t see a need for a
child to have a cell phone to make any kind of emergency call," says
Frank Auderer Jr., superintendent of St. Bernard Parish Public
Schools.

Others note that students don’t always use their cell phones
just to call Mom or 911. North Carolina’s Orange County Schools
is tightening its cell phone policy this fall in response to a spate of
more than 20 bomb threats called in to its two middle and two high
schools. "Most were called in by students from inside the school on
cell phones," spokeswoman Anne D’Annunzio says. Cell phones are
now prohibited in the district’s elementary and middle schools;
high school students must keep them in lockers or cars and can only use
them after school. Even in New York City, which experienced the
necessity of instant communication firsthand on September 11, cell
phones are still officially verboten on school grounds. A pilot
program allowing students to possess but not use cell phones during the
school day, launched this past year in 15 city high schools, is
currently being evaluated.

Recent technological advances, including phones that take
photographs and send cheating-friendly text messages, may up the stakes
of enforcing pragmatic, "carry-but-don’t-use" rules. "The
state-of-the-art phone is a picture-taking phone, and that’s what
most of the kids have right now, "Degenaar says. Organizations such as
the Montana High School Association are strongly recommending that
schools forbid the use of picture phones in locker rooms or bathrooms.
The Kentucky School Boards Association has issued a sample policy that
outlines limitations on the use of cell phones and camera phones, but
it stops short of recommending an outright ban. "We think it’s
far better to say, ‘Here’s what’s OK, here’s
what’s not,’" says KSBA spokesman Brad Hughes, "not,
‘You can’t have it.’"

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